Wait, I can capture more pets?!
Also, any advice on reading the map more effectively? I'm still very confused by it.

Yes, there are plenty of pets to be charmed.
As for reading the map, you have to familiarize yourself with the icons: heart for events in certain areas, diamonds for waypoints, red triangles for vistas, green swirls for story missions... It's easier if you have someone to run with, though.

Wait, I can capture more pets?!
Also, any advice on reading the map more effectively? I'm still very confused by it.

Yes, there are plenty of pets to be charmed.
As for reading the map, you have to familiarize yourself with the icons: heart for events in certain areas, diamonds for waypoints, red triangles for vistas, green swirls for story missions... It's easier if you have someone to run with, though.

Ohhhhhh, as much as I'm loving my panther thing, I wanna get ALL of the pets.

As for the map, I think what's throwing me is the verticality of it all. Like, "Here's this thing over here, but you have to run out of the way to go up, over some bridges, and back in the right direction to get to the thing."

I’m thinking about returning to GW 2 after a hiatus and also because my guild is starting up new weekly fractal runs. I’m curious though about where to jump in. I’ve completed all the content up to Heart of Thorns but am only halfway through that expansion. I haven’t even done anything in Path of Fire.

So here are my questions:

1. Should I skip right to the new expansion? I’ve heard it’s much more soloable and has the latest meta skills.
2. When should I start doing the Living Story? I’ll admit that the upcoming chapter sounds really interesting as they are returning to one of my favorite GW areas.
3. How hard are low level fractals for a returning player?

I’m thinking about returning to GW 2 after a hiatus and also because my guild is starting up new weekly fractal runs. I’m curious though about where to jump in. I’ve completed all the content up to Heart of Thorns but am only halfway through that expansion. I haven’t even done anything in Path of Fire.

So here are my questions:

1. Should I skip right to the new expansion? I’ve heard it’s much more soloable and has the latest meta skills.
2. When should I start doing the Living Story? I’ll admit that the upcoming chapter sounds really interesting as they are returning to one of my favorite GW areas.
3. How hard are low level fractals for a returning player?

So low level fractals will be fine even if you're rusty as long as you have a solid, experienced group running you. It'd be good to practice your skill/dodge/skill combos though, some of the newer fractals are very complex when it comes to fights, ask what the good CC (defiance bar breaking) skills are, and whether they want a power or I can't think of the DoT name, but find which is preferred for your class and that will optimize it (not necessary, but it does make the experience simpler and lessens the chance of a wipe). I assume you have Exotic+ gear, which if you don't it would be advisable to acquire some, you will need ascended at some point because of a universal fractal mechanic that shows up around 10+ I think, but that can wait. I would say if you require the story to make sense during the living story, at least start Path of Fire to understand the basics of what happened while you were gone, and do the intros for each of the newest living stories from the current season. You can piece everything together from the intro and wikipedia if you're so inclined, or if you have good deduction skills. Having mounts in Maguuma also makes it much easier to travel. Hope this helps.

I’m thinking about returning to GW 2 after a hiatus and also because my guild is starting up new weekly fractal runs. I’m curious though about where to jump in. I’ve completed all the content up to Heart of Thorns but am only halfway through that expansion. I haven’t even done anything in Path of Fire.

So here are my questions:

1. Should I skip right to the new expansion? I’ve heard it’s much more soloable and has the latest meta skills.
2. When should I start doing the Living Story? I’ll admit that the upcoming chapter sounds really interesting as they are returning to one of my favorite GW areas.
3. How hard are low level fractals for a returning player?

So low level fractals will be fine even if you're rusty as long as you have a solid, experienced group running you. It'd be good to practice your skill/dodge/skill combos though, some of the newer fractals are very complex when it comes to fights, ask what the good CC (defiance bar breaking) skills are, and whether they want a power or I can't think of the DoT name, but find which is preferred for your class and that will optimize it (not necessary, but it does make the experience simpler and lessens the chance of a wipe). I assume you have Exotic+ gear, which if you don't it would be advisable to acquire some, you will need ascended at some point because of a universal fractal mechanic that shows up around 10+ I think, but that can wait. I would say if you require the story to make sense during the living story, at least start Path of Fire to understand the basics of what happened while you were gone, and do the intros for each of the newest living stories from the current season. You can piece everything together from the intro and wikipedia if you're so inclined, or if you have good deduction skills. Having mounts in Maguuma also makes it much easier to travel. Hope this helps. :)

Higgledy and I are currently going through LS3 and the maps they added in are really awesome. I’d recommend playing it!
Get a raptor though, at bare minimum (first mission in Path of Fire), it’ll help with getting around.

As for fractals. We need to get into that. Thanks for the info, Dr Incurable. It’s one of those things I’ve hardly ever done in the span of six years.

If you can just focus on the story parts and keep yourself from having to do the optional stuff in each map, play them. They're much better than LS2 was, at least for me. If you're like me and want to do as many of the optional challenges as you can before moving on to the next area, youtubing it might be the better way to go. I only got 1/2 through LS3 before the HR disaster with Jessica Price killed my enthusiasm for continuing.

Higgledy and I are currently going through LS3 and the maps they added in are really awesome. I’d recommend playing it!
Get a raptor though, at bare minimum (first mission in Path of Fire), it’ll help with getting around.

As for fractals. We need to get into that. Thanks for the info, Dr Incurable. It’s one of those things I’ve hardly ever done in the span of six years.

Hey no problem. I'm on break ATM, burned myself out trying to make The Shining Blade. With the ascended gear you will want agony resistance, that's what I forgot to mention regarding Ascended gear. IIRC you're in ZOS? Plague is trying to start a fractal group on... Wednesdays I think? It would be a good idea to join the discord if you are in the guild. You could also seek out Calm or Kenshin for help with fractals if Plague's group is too early/late, they taught me the basics and ran me through a lot of fractals, and if you say you're a friend of mine they might help or know someone who can. Around 10+ you will be having constant background damage and additional mechanics added to the fractals known as agony, which is why you want agony resistance. agony resistance can only be put on ascended or legendary items, and grinding to build even one set is time consuming, but it's fun and worth it. ZoS also runs training raids on Sunday evenings, 9 EST and we used to usually do wing... 4 I think? I'm starting to ramble, sorry. As I understand it we have kinda migrated to Zealots of Shiverpeak, but they are trying to start up a weekly fractal group so I wanted to mention it, and if fractals aren't your thing raids might be, so that's why I mentioned that. You can also get away with exotic instead of ascended in raid training as long as you have the right builds/weapons. It'll be a little slower, but that's why it's training and not the actual raid group. I think that's everything I wanted to expand upon and I hope it clarifies a little about what I was referring to when I talked about ascended gear. Having meta food/utility is the icing on the cake but not required. Sorry for the wall of text.

No worries, I'll take any info I can get! By "we", I meant Higgledy and I, since we're going for Twilight, and we need pieces to craft the precursor.
I do have ascended trinkets, and ascended armor can't be all that far behind. I think I'll be running with my ranger, and she's got Caladbolg and Kudzu (though I could switch to Sunrise or Bifrost, should I choose to).
ZoS is definitely super helpful, I'll have to check in with them, but time zones could be an issue.

No worries, I'll take any info I can get! By "we", I meant Higgledy and I, since we're going for Twilight, and we need pieces to craft the precursor.
I do have ascended trinkets, and ascended armor can't be all that far behind. I think I'll be running with my ranger, and she's got Caladbolg and Kudzu (though I could switch to Sunrise or Bifrost, should I choose to).
ZoS is definitely super helpful, I'll have to check in with them, but time zones could be an issue.

Well done, you. The Shining Blade is pretty cool.

Heh... I made it to the ascended version, couldn't finish. Took too much to get there.

Higgledy and I are currently going through LS3 and the maps they added in are really awesome. I’d recommend playing it!
Get a raptor though, at bare minimum (first mission in Path of Fire), it’ll help with getting around.

As for fractals. We need to get into that. Thanks for the info, Dr Incurable. It’s one of those things I’ve hardly ever done in the span of six years.

Hey no problem. I'm on break ATM, burned myself out trying to make The Shining Blade. With the ascended gear you will want agony resistance, that's what I forgot to mention regarding Ascended gear. IIRC you're in ZOS? Plague is trying to start a fractal group on... Wednesdays I think? It would be a good idea to join the discord if you are in the guild. You could also seek out Calm or Kenshin for help with fractals if Plague's group is too early/late, they taught me the basics and ran me through a lot of fractals, and if you say you're a friend of mine they might help or know someone who can. Around 10+ you will be having constant background damage and additional mechanics added to the fractals known as agony, which is why you want agony resistance. agony resistance can only be put on ascended or legendary items, and grinding to build even one set is time consuming, but it's fun and worth it. ZoS also runs training raids on Sunday evenings, 9 EST and we used to usually do wing... 4 I think? I'm starting to ramble, sorry. As I understand it we have kinda migrated to Zealots of Shiverpeak, but they are trying to start up a weekly fractal group so I wanted to mention it, and if fractals aren't your thing raids might be, so that's why I mentioned that. You can also get away with exotic instead of ascended in raid training as long as you have the right builds/weapons. It'll be a little slower, but that's why it's training and not the actual raid group. I think that's everything I wanted to expand upon and I hope it clarifies a little about what I was referring to when I talked about ascended gear. Having meta food/utility is the icing on the cake but not required. Sorry for the wall of text.

No worries this is all great info. I think at some point I joined Zealots. I actually moved to a new guild but if they're ok with multi-guilding I would love to group up with some of you guys. Is ascended gear a massive grind to get or is it something you can mostly earn doing content?

Zealots has an “always represent” policy but they allow multiguilding (permitting to stay at the helm of the GWJ guild).
Ascended trinkets and jewelry who can purchase easily enough, especially if you’ve accumulated a bunch of laurels over the years. Gear is going to be trickier. It requires a lot of materials, and some items only craft one of, once a day.

You can get ascended armor and weapons from just doing content but the achievements that give them are huge grinds. You can also get them from rare drops from some of the big meta events like Tequatl and the Triple Trouble or from champion loot bags.

I crafted my ascended armor and got my weapons as dropped loot/collection rewards. As much of a grind as it is, crafting is the easiest way to get a full set of ascended armor. Just playing through HoT and regularly doing the meta events should give you most of the rarer materials you need, but it does require a crap-ton of the common materials as well, which I mostly bought from the trading post instead of farming them myself.

Depends on your class and what game mode you're going to be playing. Last I knew the Zojja's prefix was generally preferred for most content, as it's the ascended version of Berserker's. It's not going to really matter unless you're super-serious about having the best possible stats you can.

I hope this doesn't effect the game. It has been my go-to game for many years and I've essentially replaced WoW, SWTOR and other games with it. The jump in and do fun stuff fast aspect of it keeps me coming back. I love the Living Stories and have played through all of them. I have max level characters of every class and ton of gem items.

I guess its just a wait and see situation. It isn't guaranteed to have a negative impact on the game, it makes money, but who knows at this point. NCSoft doesn't have a good track record with these things. *Cough* CoH/V *Cough*